


don't think that I'm mad (I just wish it was a bit more like before)

by BlueGirl22



Category: Spring Awakening - Sheik/Sater
Genre: Alcohol, DWSA - Freeform, Fix-It, Gen, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, ilse really is 'dumb and confused but trying her best' representation, oh also I condensed and altered the dds/bw dialogue, references to suicide cause. yknow. he does in fact do sadness. but nothing Happens., so you don't have to read something with which I'm sure you're already familiar
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-27
Updated: 2019-07-27
Packaged: 2020-07-23 08:31:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,491
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20005357
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlueGirl22/pseuds/BlueGirl22
Summary: 'Keep your calm, Ilse. Don’t lose your temper,' she thought to herself. She exhaled and tried to dampen the edge her words wanted to take on. “Okay. I understand, you have things to do. Y’know what, how about I walk you home, instead? Could you live with that?”***To try and keep Moritz with her for a few more minutes, Ilse tries something else, and the night turns out rather differently than it might have.





	don't think that I'm mad (I just wish it was a bit more like before)

**Author's Note:**

> title from "anymore" by joe iconis, which gives me MAD "don't do sadness/blue wind" vibes (especially when sung by a former moritz and ilse like here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v-ptKrgI7ZE)

The forest was cold and bright, the way winter so often is. The sky was still a blindingly bright blue overhead, but someone attuned with the fickleness of the heavens could spot the darkening edge rapidly approaching from the horizon. It was just cold enough to make the twigs let out satisfying _snaps_ when a foot fell on them, which is exactly what they were doing as the heavy black boots of a young girl trampled all over them in her amble through the woods.

She wasn’t quite sure where she was going. Physically, she knew the direction, as she’d mostly been following the river, but she had no destination in mind. She knew she’d lose the light soon enough, but she was enjoying the air too much to be thinking about turning back. There was also the fact that she wasn’t too keen on returning to the host with whom she’d been staying for the past few weeks. That would have been a tad bit awkward, considering that, firstly, he’d made an attempt on her life, and secondly, after scrambling away from his warning shot, she’d grabbed her coat, _all his cannabis_ , and ran. 

Much of her time that day since then had been spent loitering around and consuming much of the aforementioned cannabis. She realized at one point that she may have gone a little overboard, but she didn’t really care. The gun had rattled her; she needed to relax.

She paused for a moment. The sun _was_ going down rather quickly, and she knew she’d have to face that soon. Looking around, she figured that she wasn’t too far from her little cottage. She hadn’t been there in a good long while, but, with any luck, the place should still be intact. She still wasn’t keen on going back to the empty place all alone, but it wasn’t like she had other options.

Resuming her original pace, she forged on ahead. The river bent at a fairly severe angle, and she followed it. As she rounded the bend, she noticed someone ahead of her. A figure standing just on the bank. Whoever it was was turned away from her, so she couldn’t make out their face. She thought they may have been looking down at something in their hands.

She inched closer to the point where she was barely an arm’s length away. _Wait, no, can it be? It’s been so long. Oh my God, it is!_ She put her hand on the person’s shoulder. “Moritz Stiefel?”

He jumped away from her the moment she touched him, dipped his hands into his pockets, and just stared at her, eyes wide.

 _Oh, right, I forgot._ She rolled up her sleeves to her elbows and did his name sign.

He looked her up and down, recognition blooming on his face. “ _Ilse?_ ”

She nodded her head a few times and chuckled. 

His eyes danced around skittishly. “ _You frightened me._ ”

“I can see that.” She smiled at him, trying to show that she meant no harm.

He clenched his teeth and kicked at the dirt on the ground. “ _Why did you frighten me, dammit?_ ”

“Sorry, did I interrupt you in the middle of something?” It didn’t look to her like he was doing anything, but she could be wrong. “I saw you over here, and I couldn't just keep going and _not_ say ‘hello’. What are you doing all the way out here in the woods by yourself?”

His fingers twitched like he was thinking about replying, but he didn’t. He cast his gaze to the ground.

She followed where he was looking and tried to catch his attention again. “Did you… lose something?”

Still no reply from him.

“ _What_ are you looking for, then?”

He shrugged and sighed. “ _If only I knew_.”

Ilse furrowed her brows at him. “Then why are you- why would you be looking for something in the middle of nowhere all the way out of town if you don’t even know what it is? I may not have set foot inside a school room for a few years but even _I’d_ say that’s fairly nonsensical.”

He smiled sheepishly. “ _So… what have you been doing the past few years?_ ”

“Well,” she chuckled, “I’ve mainly been staying at the artists’ colony a little ways off. Have you heard of it? It’s called-” she switched to finger spelling- “ _P-R-I-A-P-I-A_.”

Moritz nodded noncommittally.

“Well, we have a lot of fun over there. Those artist types are _wild_ , you never know when a paint fight is going to turn dangerous.” She gave a cackle and sat herself down on the ground. Moritz awkwardly followed her lead. “Though, for the past few days I’ve been staying with Gustave Baum.” She paused for effect. “I _know_ , the one and only. It was wonderful staying with him, I learned so many new painting techniques. It’s such a shame that this morning-” she cut herself off mid sentence. “Actually, I won’t talk about that. It’s a long story you don’t need to know. The point is, I’m not staying with him any more. I wasn’t having fun. Um-” she floundered mentally, looking for a fitting subject change- “How are you, Moritz? How’s school? Are you still going? I forget when you age out.”

Moritz dipped the toe of his shoe in the running water. “ _I’m not to go back next year_.”

“Oh, well good for you!” She clapped him rather heavily on the back. “Making it through all of that must’ve been tough, God knows I wouldn’t have been able to. I always hated school. The highlight of my day was running home with- with you wasn’t it, usually?” Some memories trickled back in. “Yes, you… Melchior Gabor… and Wendla Bergmann. We’d pretend sticks were swords and I was always the Dread Pirate Ilse.” She laughed and fell back, closing her eyes for a moment.

When she opened them, she saw Moritz’s face hanging above her, his brows knit together. He looked rather cute like that. She reached up her hand and gently stroked his face, and he jumped back.

“ _I should go,_ ” he signed as she sat up.

“No, don’t leave me so soon.” She turned away for a second and looked down the river from where she’d come. Her hands unmoving by her sides, she said, “I don’t want to be alone,” then, turning back to him and signing along, “Come home with me.”

He swallowed nervously. “ _And do what?_ ”

“Well,” Ilse quirked her lips up into a smile and scooted closer to him, “There’s no shortage of sticks in this forest. What do you say to being a pirate? We could… play some games.” She slid her hand over his shoulder and again, he flinched away. Ilse took her hand back just as quickly. _Alright, he_ really _doesn’t like that._

“ _That did used to be fun._ ” He gave her a smile. It was quick, but it looked genuine. “ _I wish I could go with you_.”

“So why don’t you?”

For just a second, he looked like he might agree. Ilse watched his face and felt hopeful. Then, something hardened in his features and he stood up abruptly. “ _I’ve got schoolwork. Eighty lines of Virgil, sixteen equations, a paper on the Hapsburgs, and my mother will want help making dinner._ ”

She got up and found herself roughly eye-to-eye with Moritz. She just stared at him for a moment, silently pleading.

He looked up at the sky and then back to her. “ _Good night, Ilse._ ”

“Just-” she reached out her hand to keep him from going- “Walk me home. You don’t have to stay. Just walk with me.”

“ _I can’t_.”

“It’ll barely take any time at all, I only live-”

“ _Honestly, I wish I could._ ”

She inhaled. _Is he really choosing something so dull over me? He might never see me again_. She could feel her pulse going up, and her desire to snap something mean rose right along with it. _Keep your calm, Ilse. Don’t lose your temper._ She exhaled and tried to dampen the edge her words wanted to take on. “Okay. I understand, you have things to do. Y’know what, how about _I_ walk _you_ home, instead? Could you live with that?”

She thought she could see him biting the inside of his cheek. He started signing a few times, but kept stopping before he could form a whole sentence. “ _I- I mean maybe that would be- just as far as-_ ” he heaved a deep sigh. “ _I can’t think of a reason to say ‘no’."_

“So don’t. Simple.” She sidled up to him and looped her arm through his. “Lead the way, good sir.”

He didn’t move.

“I don’t actually know the way to your house, Moritz. It’s been too long, you’ll have to show me.”

 _"Right, sorry, I’m just_ -” he froze again- “ _Thinking._ ” Slowly, he shuffled forward, and Ilse fell into step beside him.

They walked on in silence. Ilse tried to start up some more conversation with him a few times, but he’d just demure and respond by way of nodding or shaking his head. After a while, she let him be and took in the scenery as they came into town. It had been a long, _long_ time since she’d been this close to her former home, and nothing appeared to have changed. The buildings were all the same, the footpaths were unchanged if perhaps slightly more warn, and it all had the same quiet feel as it did before. She thought it was remarkable how everything had changed for her and yet nothing had changed for anyone else.

Eventually, she caught sight of a house which, if her foggy memory served her correctly, was the Stiefel abode. Beside her, Moritz went dead still. Feet-cemented-to-the-ground still.

She turned to look at her companion for the first time in a few minutes. “Isn’t that your house, Moritz?”

He gulped, keeping his hands still by his sides, but he nodded.

She freed her arm from his. “Aren’t you going in?”

The light was almost gone, so she couldn’t quite tell, but she could have sworn that his eyes were filling up with tears. Hands shaking, he signed, “ _I don’t want- I don’t think I can._ ”

“Why n-” she stopped herself mid-sentence, studying his face. His expression tugged at her memory. As a rule, she tried not to think about the events that led up to her leaving home, but she was suddenly thrown back in time to when Father Kaulbach had broken her trust and told her parents what she’d told him about them. She remembered staring into her own eyes, bent over her reflection in a nearby pond, facing down the idea of going back to live with them as if nothing had happened. Ilse may not have had any clue as to what was going on in Moritz’s head, nor in his life, but she could make out enough to know that she didn’t want him going in there, either.

“Well,” she started, putting on her best fake smile and trying to pretend like she was taking everything he said at face value, “If you _do_ want to skip out on that school work after all, then the offer to come back to my cottage is still open.”

“ _I_ _’m not really in the mood for playing make-believe right now._ ” However, despite his words, he looked like he might be considering it now, as opposed to his blind refusal before.

“We don’t have to _actually_ play pirates, Moritz, I just said that before because I thought it’d make you laugh.” She pondered. “We could, I don’t know, just go back and talk?”

He still didn’t look convinced.

“Do you like painting at all? I’ve got more art supplies than I know what to do with.”

“ _I’ve never really- no_.”

 _Hmmmmm._ She looked him up-and-down again. What could sweeten the deal for him? The advance she’d made earlier had just freaked him out, and that had never failed to work on a man before. _Maybe that’s where I went wrong_ , she thought to herself. He wasn’t a _man_ , he was a boy. A boy who appeared to be _so_ stressed right now that he might physically snap in half if she looked at him wrong. “Have you ever been drunk, Moritz?”

His eyes fluttered down to her hands from where they'd been fixed on her eyes, as if checking to make sure he didn't misunderstand. _That_ had caught his attention. “ _Once, last Christmas._ ”

Ilse smiled. “I’ve got a few bottles of spirits and wine lying around. We could drink until we pass out. No offense, but you sort of look like you could use it. What do you say to that?”

He looked into the middle distance for a moment, thinking, and then stiffly but vigorously nodded his head.

 _Got him_. “I thought you might like that. Come on, it’ll be black out in ten minutes, but I think we can make it if we run. Follow me.” Without another word, she took off at a sprint, and heard Moritz pelting after her.

* * *

By the time Moritz started shaking with sobs like a demon of anguish was trying to wrench itself out of his body via his tear ducts, Ilse had mostly realized that this may not have been her best idea.

The night had started out perfectly well. The light had already gone by the time they got to her three-room cottage, but she quickly went about lighting lamps and getting the fireplace going until a warm glow bathed every inch of the spacious sitting room. She then sat Moritz down on the sofa by the back wall, fetched some bottles and cups, and set about trying to get him used to the taste of straight gin. There was a lot of nose holding and suppressed gagging at first, but gin is the sort of drink where the more one consumes of it, the less one is inclined to care about the taste, so it started going down more easily after he’d forced himself to swallow some. An hour or so passed, Moritz lost some of the tension in his frame, and Ilse thought things were going just about as well as they could. He hadn’t taken off his shoes, coat, or scarf, but he at least seemed slightly more at ease.

She, sipping on wine and sitting on the carpet in front of the sofa, told some of her more jovial stories about life in Priapia, and Moritz even found it in himself to laugh a few times. The first off note rang out when Ilse made the mistake of asking him a question in turn. She noticed that she’d been taking up most of the conversation, so, trying to be courteous, she inquired after the well-being of his father. She’d only met the man the once when she was little, but he’d seemed perfectly pleasant at the time, so she thought it a safe topic.

Moritz didn’t answer for a minute, he just started down at the space between where his feet rested on the floor. Then, almost in one fluid motion, he quickly signed “ _He’s fine_ ,” refilled his mug, and threw it back in as few gulps as he could.

Ilse took note of that, but, already feeling some of the alcohol’s effects herself, elected to let it pass. Surely it meant nothing.

Outside, the wind howled. Branches blew back and forth, occasionally tickling the window pane. She would see the tips of them on the glass, for a moment catching the light from inside, and then they’d blow away again, lost in the dark. It was perfectly warm in the room, but Ilse suddenly felt goosebumps rise up on her arms. It would probably snow soon.

She heard something from Moritz and turned to see him messily pouring more into his cup, a little splashing onto the threadbare carpet. Noting how much had gone from the bottle since the evening began, Ilse tapped him on the knee to get his attention. “Hey, Moritz, maybe you should slow down?”

He took a sip and then responded with, “ _I don’t want to._ ”

“That’s fair enough,” Ilse gave a breathy chuckle, “But you’re going to make yourself sick.”

“ _What’s the worst that could happen?_ ”

He obviously meant it rhetorically, but Ilse wanted to get her point across. Plus, she was feeling a little feisty. “You could die. Is _that_ what you want, Moritz? Do you want to _die?_ ” she asked sarcastically.

His face tensed. For a second, Ilse thought he may have been about to give an answer, but he just ran his hands through his hair and quickly finished what was in his cup.

She scoffed. “ _Your funeral_ ,” she signed without speaking.

Once again, her mind wandered, and time passed. She watched the shadows of a chair dance on the wall as the fire flickered. Actually, the fire was getting low, she ought to put more wood on. She set down her glass and lurched up a tad unsteadily. Grabbing a few logs from the pile beside the fireplace and tossing them on the flames, she tried her best not to singe herself. Though, to be fair, not accidentally setting herself on fire had gotten a lot easier ever since she had cut all her hair off. Even completely sober, long hair just had a tendency to catch fire in these situations.

She turned back to the sofa and saw Moritz sitting with his head in his hands. Alright, there were only so many clues she could overlook; he didn’t appear to be feeling his best this evening. She should investigate. Cautiously, she walked back over to her spot on the sofa and sat down. As she situated herself back into a comfortable position, she reached out with her bare foot and tapped his ankle. Reflexively, his leg jumped back from her touch. He lifted his head from his hands and looked at her with a bleary gaze.

“How are you feeling?” asked Ilse.

He exhaled sharply through his nose in a low-effort laugh, making his right hand into a thumbs-down shape and brushing the tip of his thumb on his chin. “ _Drunk_.”

She chuckled. “No, you know what I mean. Emotionally, how are you feeling?”

He looked to be thinking of how to answer and squeezed his eyes shut for a second. When he opened them, Ilse could see tears gathering at his lashline. All of a sudden, he grabbed the gin bottle from the floor and started taking frantic gulps straight from the neck.

 _Shit fuck damn,_ thought Ilse, getting up to go sit next to him. She put her hand on the wrist of the arm he was using to hold the bottle and gently pulled it away from his face, gingerly taking it out of his grip and placing it on the other side of her, just out of his reach. He didn’t put up much resistance, he just crumpled forward and leaned his head on his hand, sobbing. “No, no, don’t do that,” she muttered to herself. _Fuck. That’s not ideal._

She shook his shoulder, but his eyes stayed fixed downward. She bent down to his eye level, but he seemed to be busy crying. Ilse had always had a tendency to make stressful situations worse by talking, so it was probably just as well that Moritz didn’t seem up for seeing what she had to say. She bit her lip. But if not talking, what was she to do?

She raised her right arm and it hovered in the air, her hand opening and closing a few times. After a second, she chose to try and rest it on his back. The second her hand touched him, he turned inward and squeezed his arms around her, pressing his face into the neck of her dress. Momentarily startled, Ilse wrapped her arms around him in turn. Yes, she could do comforting holding. There were only so many way that could go wrong.

Putting her face in his hair, she planted a kiss on the top of his head. “God I’m so stupid, this was such a bad idea,” she whispered into the air. She felt him tremble in her arms as he sobbed. Gently, she rocked back-and-forth. It felt like the right thing to do.

This carried on for maybe a quarter of an hour, but eventually his breathing evened out and she stopped hearing him whimper so much. She bent her head down to his shoulder and found his eyes closed.

“Moritz,” she whispered, shaking his shoulder gently. His face scrunched up a little bit, but he didn’t open his eyes, his mind somewhere between slumber and stupor. 

Ilse slowly lowered his head back against the armrest of the sofa and stood up, surveying him. Usually, if young men found themselves passed out in her humble abode, she’d leave them where they lay and let them fend for themselves when they woke up. Somehow, she didn’t think that was appropriate on this occasion. She put her fists on her hips and mumbled aloud to herself, “Well, might as well play proper hostess.”

She lifted his feet onto the end of the sofa, and by his total lack of reaction this time she figured that he’d slipped all the way into unconsciousness. With the amount he’d drunk, he’d be out cold well into the next morning. Ilse took ahold of one of his shoes and fumbled with the lace, trying to get it off his foot. She forgot to grab it as it came off, and it hit the ground with a _thump_. Instinctively, she winced and looked up at his head to see if he'd stirred, but then remembered that the noise wouldn’t exactly bother him. Slipping the other one off more quickly, she brought the shoes over to where she’d left hers by the fire earlier.

Next, she unwrapped the scarf from his neck. Holding it between her hands, she noted how soft it was. Simple and grey, it had probably been made for him by his mother. She brought it up to her cheek and enjoyed the feeling of it against her skin. With a sigh, she tossed it over the rocking horse on the side of the room. 

She snaked her hands under his shoulders and tried to lift Moritz’s torso to get his coat off him. “Ugh, you’re heavy,” she grunted. After a moment of struggle with the coat, she got his arms out of it and was about to toss it on the rocking horse as well when she noticed something weighing down one of the pockets. Not thinking twice about it, she dipped her hand in and felt something metal in there. Almost recognizing its shape, she pulled it out and looked at it in the light. In her grasp was a wood handled silver revolver, the reflection of the fire light dancing in the polished metal. She squinted and could just make out the initials “R.S.” engraved on its side.

“Moritz, why do you have a gun with…” She trailed off as she felt a little tickle in her brain. Automatically, she started to sift through the evenings events, recontextualizing them as she went. The way his hand had gone right into his pocket when she’d found him. How night had been falling yet he didn’t have a lantern. The insistence he’d had on not going with her. His lack of explanation for why he was out in the middle of the woods. His inability to hold conversation. The fear on his face at the idea of going home. The sheer amount he’d been drinking. His answers to her questions.

Her mind sought for another explanation for the weapon, but she kept reaching only one conclusion. 

Her heart lurched up into her throat.

“Oh, oh Moritz, I’m so sorry,” she whispered, sinking to her knees to get her face roughly level with his. He was still fast asleep, but she squeezed his shoulder with her unoccupied hand and pressed a kiss to his cheek nonetheless. Her lips came away salty and damp, so she dried his face with the cuff of her sleeve. “I- I didn’t notice. I _should_ have noticed. You could have talked about it.”

She stayed there for a minute, staring into his sleeping face, then stood up abruptly and took a deep breath. What should she do? She couldn't just do nothing. She should… get the gun out of reach. She opened the cylinder and her breath caught in her throat. There was only one bullet. _Pull it together, Ilse_.

Looking around the room, she tried to figure out what to do. Not able to come up with anything better, she crossed over to a window, opened it, got blasted in the face by a gust of wind, and tossed the bullet out as far as she could. Then she went into her tiny bedroom and slid the gun itself under the mattress. Next, she sped off into the kitchen and got a pitcher of water, a glass, and an empty bowl. Knowing Moritz was apt to be feeling ill come the morning, she put them on a table by the sofa.

She headed back to bedroom and was about to clamber into her sheets, but stopped before she did. Standing there for a moment and considering, she pulled the quilt and pillows off the bed and brought them out into the sitting room, laying them out in front of the sofa in the spot where she’d been sitting earlier. She knew there wasn’t much of a chance that Moritz would wake up before her, but she didn’t want him to come to in an empty room if he did.

As she went about putting out the lamps and setting one last log on the fire, she noticed it had begun to snow outside. The flakes were falling fast and thick. She looked back at the boy on her sofa. Were he laying outside, the snow would probably have covered him by the time the sun came up. It would be neigh on impossible to see him in the whiteness.

She felt tears start to prick her eyes, and shook the thought from her head. Going to lay down in her make-shift bed on the floor, she suspected she wouldn’t be getting a lot of sleep that night. She was fine with that, as it would give her time to think of a plan of action for the next day. Ilse may not have known _what the hell_ she was going to do tomorrow, but she knew that she was going to do _something_. She was glad for it, too. She wasn’t the ideal person to try and help this situation, but she was _a_ person. She couldn’t bear the thought of finding him out there in the snow.

**Author's Note:**

> if you feel so compelled, feel free to comment or kudo (is that the verb of "to give kudos? the world may never know). I'm also @bisexual-evanhansen on the tumblr dot com, if you'd prefer to bother me over there.


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